In
the early centuries of Western art Peter Paul
Rubens probably was the most prolific painter. I have some tales to
tell, but not for a “Moment.” To appreciate Rubens and
his adventurous life, it is necessary to understand the Antwerp,
Belgium of his time (this column) and the Guild of St. Luke and the
Friday Market, (next week’s story).
Few
cities of the Western World have a spirit of free commerce that
goes back as far as Antwerp's. This far-ranging and wily mercantile
energy simmered and brewed with other forces over a slow peat fire
for a dozen centuries until it turned Antwerp into an unsurpassed
center for the traffic in phony art.
While
secret workshops in France and Italy may be today's best providers
of counterfeit art, we shall never be quite quit of the
multitudinous impostures spewed out long ago in Antwerp. It is
fascinating to see how all this came about by interplay of
implacable forces: the inbred need to trade or perish; the growth,
changing role, and moral decline of the Guild of St. Luke; the
establishment of the Friday Market; the prestige of Peter Paul
Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jan Breughel, Frans Snyders, Jacob
Jordaens, and many lesser Flemish masters; and the
political-religious war that drained away much of the externally
oriented vitality of the city and enabled its artistic fountainhead
to gush forth, first with great art and then a copiousness of
imitations, plagiarisms, counterfeits, fakes, and frauds.
The
character and genius of people is first manifest in their choice of
emplacement. This choice then further shapes their character.
Farmers settle on flat and fertile lands, while warriors fortify
themselves in places which are the easiest to defend. A commercial
people gravitates to crossroads and ready transportation: where
caravan trails intersect, where boats can deposit cargo, where
different cultures or peoples come together.
Because
of its strategic location 50 miles from the sea on the
right bank of the Scheldt, where the Schyn joined it in the middle
of a swamp, Antwerp must have been a trading point from the moment
some first Belgae family from the Ambivariti tribe set up camp there
and didn't move on.
The
air was humid and feverish, given to thick fogs. Much of the soft,
unstable earth was daily inundated by tides, and the sweet rushes
were bent by the winds. Three cattail stalks commemorate the swamp
on the city's early coat of arms.
By
the fifth century A.D. the community was part of the Saxon coasts
composed of the same men of proud independence and free institutions
who founded the Kingdom of Kent in Britain in 455. They established
the guilds, which became too powerful for even Charlemagne to
dissolve. Thus Antwerp did not undergo feudal tyranny.
As
the people multiplied they created, in addition to the guilds, vast
associations of free men to protect their goods against brigands.
These associations were generben, which is pronounced
Anerpen, later Antwerpen.
There
is an old legend which is indispensable to an
understanding of the unfettered genius of the people. A terrible
giant, Druon Antigen, lived in the Castle of Anvers. (Anvers
remains the French name for Antwerp.) He retained right of
passage on all merchants going up or down the Scheldt and took
one-half their merchandise for toll. Any blockade runner he caught
lost all his cargo and his right hand, which was cut off and thrown
into the river. Hence from hand and werrpen (to throw)
came handwerpen—and eventually Antwerpen or Antwerp. The
valiant King of Tongres, Salvius Brabon, who was the husband of a
cousin of Julius Caesar, subdued the giant, cut off its hand, and
threw it into the river.
An
amputated hand is another part of an Antwerp coat of arms, and for
many centuries the axing off of a hand was a penalty for certain
crimes.
Salvius
became the first Duke of Brabant, a domain of 26 walled towns, 18
lesser towns, and 700 villages. Court was at Bruxelles and the
University at Louvain. In the heart of 17 Benelux counties, Antwerp
became the greatest commercial town in Europe. In fact by the time
of William the Conqueror it was already one of the great cities--but
it had not a single paved street. Wood buildings of all shapes and
sizes jumbled against each other. Public structures were no more
than vast hangars.
While
written political records go back to 726, the earliest surviving
commercial record dates from 1212. It shows a spirited commerce in
wine from Cologne, which was sold from public depots in the Great
Market and in the Cemetery of Notre-Dame. City fathers evidently
feared fakery of the product, and strict regulations and inspection
were instituted to prevent adulteration or dilution. The Antwerpers
were not going to be history's first to be duped by eau de Cologne.
In
1288 the people of Antwerp helped the House of Louvain subdue
Limbourg in the Battle of Woeringen, which insured Brabant its safe
trade route to Cologne and on into Germany. In recognition of
services they were able to obtain from Duke John I a charter
abolishing slavery, guaranteeing personal liberty to all, and
enfranchising everyone born in the city.
Within
a few years the first trading galleons appeared from Venice and were
soon followed by others from Genoa. Under the initiative of free
men, trade boomed.
Cologne
wine was traded northward for Hamburg wheat; timber came in from
Germany, Denmark, and Sweden; and the wool and fabric commerce with
England took on such enormous proportions that it became the
dominant factor in the commercial market, particularly after the
silting of the Zwyn drove the English out of Bruges. In fact when
Edward III decided to move the wool staple to Antwerp, 400 ships
sailed from Yarmouth.
By
1500 textile trading with England reached an annual rate of 12
million gold ecus, while wheat accounted for 1. 7 million, German
wine 1.5 million and French wine 1.1 million. Obviously in those
days, Gerrnan wine was more highly esteemed as the French, for the
commerce in each amounted to 40,000 barrels.
The
Jesuit Scribanius recounted, “I have seen as many as 2500 ships
in the Scheldt, the latecomers remaining two to three weeks at
anchor before being able to reach the docks.” He
also said that 1,000 commercial chariots of freight from Germany and
France entered the city each week and that peasant chariots in the
same period accounted for 10,000 more.
Perhaps
the figures are exaggerated, but at this time the powerful Fugger
banking family from Augsberg opened an Antwerp branch and kept on
hand in cash the astonishing capital of 6,000,000 gold ecus, which,
as Antwerp people noted, was the equivalent of 125,000,000 francs.
Originally
all commerce was direct trading, exchanging this item for that. But
as dozens of strange coinages poured in, each nation established its
own clearing house in the city, and a money changing trade
developed.
Because
of usury laws, which imposed confiscatory penalties, the Lombards
devised letters of credit.
Statutory
ceilings on annual interest charges were enacted. For Antwerp
citizens this limit was 44 1/2%, while for foreigners the ceiling
was 66 3/4%. Interest on undercover loans went higher, much higher.
So the tradition of making a lot of money fast was inbred into this
free-trading, self-ruling people.
With
all its mechanisms and rights of self-government, Antwerp, as a part
of the Netherlands, was Habsburg property and under the political
authority of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, himself a
Netherlander. The lowland peoples liked him and in their devotion
tried to uphold his desires but often found it disastrous when they
did. Of Charles V, Eugene Gens says, “He was fatal to the
people's civil liberties and destructive of their material
interests; he substituted monopolies and prohibition for the free
market and organized work; his wars produced waste; he created the
colonial system, reinstituted slavery, subjugated Negroes, created
royal factories, protected the Inquisition, and prepared for the
ruin by the Spanish monarchy of all countries under his domain.”
Charles
bequeathed both the Netherlands and the crown of Spain to his son
Phillip II, thus placing the 17 low-country provinces under Spanish
rule. After centuries of fighting Moorish infidels, Spaniards, "with
mixed strains of brooding mysticism, rigid orthodoxy, and angry
intolerance" were prepared to stamp out any whisper of heresy
wherever it might be suspicioned, but could not as readily
understand stock exchanges, letters of credit, bills of
transfer, or bank deposits.
The
Netherlanders, on the other hand, were scholars and intellectuals,
and their cities were clearing houses for ideas as much as trade
goods. Long before Martin Luther, scattered Albigensian and Vaudois
protesters from France escaped liquidation by finding refuge in
Flanders. Luther and Calvin found staunch--if often
underground--adherents throughout the provinces, as did the
Anabaptists, the far left flange of the Protestant movement, whose
suspected presence in Antwerp made even the tolerant merchants and
council uneasy, lest an infiltrating movement endeavor to duplicate
in Antwerp the madness Johann Bockholdt--John of Leyden--had
perpetrated in Munster.
Philip,
in terror of being Anabaptized, preferred to anathematize, and he
reinstated the hated Inquisition throughout the provinces. Heresy
was a bid for political power. Philip would crush it out. To
strengthen his hand, he decided to create new bishoprics. The
Estates-General, the governing assembly of nobles and tradesmen,
howled. Charles V's Placard Against Heresy of 1550 had decreed that
those who bought, sold, printed, or possessed heretical books; sold
or painted pictures opprobrious to the Virgin Mary, the saints, or
the Ecclesiastes; broke or effaced images; held a disputation over
the Holy Scriptures, in private or public; or preached or supported
doctrines disapproved by the government should be beheaded, buried
alive, or burned. To accommodate objections from Antwerp the
applications of these measures were softened for its citizens.
The
Estates-General was willing to have the Placards Against Heresy
enforced, but by lay authority! They saw the move to create new
bishoprics as a camouflage to subject laymen to canon law, to stifle
trade as well as conscience, and to seize the property of rich
people by accusing them--secretly--of heresy. Even monks opposed the
move, lest their own revenues be diverted.
The
riots that drove city planner Van Schoonbeke out of Antwerp were
part of the general unrest against Habsburg and Spanish repression,
which brought the garrisoning of Spanish troops. Their withdrawal
was demanded by the Estates-General and by William of Orange, who
led the provinces of Holland and Zeeland in successful revolt.
Philip trotted up the ruthless Duke of Alva with 11,000 more Spanish
warriors. When he retook Malines he freed the troops for three days
of pillaging. So much plunder was brought to Antwerp by Spanish
soldiers that the Friday Market was glutted. There were so many
chalices, pictures, and other church property that the Council
ordered the people not to buy it,
except to give it back to the churches of Malines. When Antwerp's
number came up, the Spanish Fury massacred 6,000 citizens and burned
8,000 houses. Rich men begged for bread, and vast regions remained
uncultivated.
During
brief Protestant occupations of various cities, religious art of
every kind was destroyed in mass; much of it could not be replaced
on the Friday market, even by second rate work, and new pieces would
need to be created whenever peace came.
Once
the Germanic Northern Provinces established their independence, they
maintained it by battle and international intrigue; but the Latin
Southern Provinces remained Spanish. The seven Northern Provinces
controlled the sea and blocked the Scheldt, cutting off Antwerp’s
maritime commerce. Massacres, war casualties, exiled Protestants,
and craftsmen fleeing to cities where they could obtain employment
brutally sliced Antwerp’s population from 110,000 (plus 15,000
floaters) in 1568 to 85,000 in 1584 and to 55,000 in 1589.
These
do not sound like circumstances which would nourish a
great art movement, but they did. The tide which had moved the center
of art and culture--including schools of sculpture and painting and
great printing houses--from Bruges to Antwerp had vigorous momentum.
Cut off from external trade and preoccupations, the people turned
inward, both to create a stronger intellectual climate and to build prosperity
by increased trade among themselves. The mass destruction of
religious art in itself created a tremendous market for the members of
the Guild of St. Luke, and the Friday Market became livelier than
ever.
The
time was ripe for the advent of Peter Paul Rubens, who was not only
one of the great painters of all times but a political spy and
intriguer, a painter of hundreds of copies of other artist's works,
and even a forger of himself.
He
also became one of the most forged artists of his time.
Lawrence Jeppson is an art consultant, organizer and curator of art exhibitions, writer, editor
and publisher, lecturer, art historian, and appraiser. He is America's leading authority on
modern, handwoven French tapestries. He is expert on the works of William Henry Clapp, Nat
Leeb, Tsing-fang Chen, and several French artists.
He is founding president of the non-profit Mathieu Matégot Foundation for Contemporary
Tapestry, whose purview encompasses all 20th-century tapestry, an interest that traces back to
1948. For many years he represented the Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie and
Arelis in America.
Through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the American Federation of
Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and his own Art Circuit Services he has been a contributor to
or organizer of more than 200 art exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan.
He owns AcroEditions, which publishes and/or distributes multiple-original art. He was co-founder and artistic director of Collectors' Investment Fund.
He is the director of the Spring Arts Foundation; Utah Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Fine
Arts Legacy Foundation
Lawrence is an early-in-the-month home teacher, whose beat is by elevator. In addition, he has spent the past six years hosting and promoting reunions of the missionaries who served in the French Mission (France, Belgium, and Switzerland) during the decade after WWII.